Ok there are some things that if you don’t actually know me that you need to know. Firstly that I adore takeaway food but hate eating in restaurants. Secondly I still prefer jogging bottoms to jeans (although I have learnt that jogging bottoms should not be seen at any social occasion or even just walking to the shops). Thirdly that I fully believe Sky+ is my most beloved gadget and I fully wonder how we lived before it got invented. Fourthly I have Care Bears and lastly and possibly most obviously I am in no way an alpha male nor manly in any of the traditional ways.

If you know me well you’ll know all this but whilst I couldn’t care less about owning all the ten original Care Bears (there is a legitimate back story behind this) the fact that I’m not manly still at times leaves me a little bit uncomfortable. Society still expects a man to be able to fix things when they go wrong and not have to call someone in. So we get to the tale of the past few days…

Neil v the blocked sinks

Yeah…my bathroom sink has been blocked for months but it wasn’t a huge issue. I live on my own and bizarrely I actually have more bathrooms than people living in my place so I use the en suite and could ignore the bathroom sink issue. I did try using drain unblocker as well as soda crystals/vinegar and of course the plunger but nothing worked so I kinda just left it. It does drain just incredibly slowly. For example if I filled up the sink it would probably take a few days to fully drain away.

So anyway last week suddenly my en suite started draining slower than Eric the Eel swims the 100m Freestyle. This was a problem. I wanted at least one sink working so again I tried what I had previous tried to little effect. Next I bought a wire thing that you can put down the plughole and jig it about and it pulls up gunk. This worked in a very small way so I was stuffed. It was either call the landlord and call out a plumber or do it myself. It was time for me to become a man.

So last night I’m there in the en suite and I unscrewed one of the pipes and I have a look inside. It was relatively clear. Therefore I knew the problem had to be in the trap underneath the sink. I had tried to unscrew this before but it wouldn’t unscrew. This was problematic. So I’m jiggling the pipes and the trap as by doing that the water seemed to trickle away and suddenly the trap came off in my hand. Water gushed out and then I saw what was in the trap. Wow. It was completely stuffed up with a hard plaster type substance. No surprise then that my sink wasn’t draining.

I scrape out the gunk and I do mean scrape it out. Then I stick my fingers up the pipe and clean out all the gunk and screw the trap back on. I turn on the hot water tap and it is draining so I put it on full blast and leave it to run for a minute or two to clean out any further small levels of gunk down the pipe. It drains well. I go to bed happy in the knowledge that I’d try the bathroom sink today.

Sadly though it was not that easy. My bathroom sink is hard to get to the u-bend (it has no trap) so I have to do it blind. I find everything I can unscrew at the back and finally find the two bits that connect the u-bend to the sink and to the pipe at the bottom of the system. This took me a while. I pull out the u-bend and it is exactly the same plaster type substance completely blocking it up. I must have some really hard water or something. So I run the hot tap through the disconnected u-bend (as I can’t scrape it out like the trap) and keep knocking it against the side of the bath. Slowly all the gunk piles out and I can’t believe how much there is. That is probably why it wasn’t draining.

I test the u-bend under the tap and it is clear and now I have to reconnect everything I disconnected. Again I’m doing it blind because it is against the wall and I can’t see anything. I get the top bit connected to the sink and find I have it on backwards. I unscrew it and turn it around and tighten it up again. Happily the bottom part is now lined up perfectly with the u-bend and I struggle to tighten it fully but it is tight. I run the hot water tap full blast again through the system testing both connections to ensure there are no drips and there are none.

Success!

Yes I logically and methodically fixed my two completely blocked sinks. I haven’t felt this manly in a long time and I’m immensely proud of myself. I’m pretty sure calling out a plumber for both would have cost my landlord a few quid and made me feel pretty stupid when I found out what the problem was and how easy (relatively) it was to fix once I had located where the blockage had to be. This has undoubtedly been a good start to the week and for a Monday morning it is pretty outstanding. I even had my March invoices paid into my bank account this morning. Good times.

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